"And what is well written, and what badly -- need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?" -- Socrates, in Plato's Phaedrus (http://www.spiritweb.org/Plato/Phaedrus/) [http://www.spiritweb.org/Plato/Phaedrus/part-03.html]
See also ZenAndTheArtOfMotorcycleMaintenance.